This spring, Liberty staged its first golden-age musical since Cinderella in 2019, as “Oklahoma!” entered the theater. Cast and crew began production in January, meeting routinely in preparation for the showings in April.
“It has been a very long time since we have done a golden age musical,” theater director Melissa Gehrke said. This show followed a more traditional format, with songs and large acting scenes following each other closely. This was different from what drama club members were used to, and “it required a lot of different skills to make it work,” Gehrke said.
Theater director Melissa Gehrke hoped to approach this beloved musical differently.
“It seemed like people consistently forgot about the darker parts of Oklahoma,” Gehrke said, “that started to make me think about how people categorize their memories and sometimes look with rose colored glasses.”
Gehrke had noticed that many people remember “Oklahoma!” only for its bright, happy moments. They seem to forget the conflicts and the death. She saw this as an opportunity to present the influence memory can have.
“That led me to thinking about nostalgia and how it can shift your memories a bit,” Gehrke said. With this in mind, she wanted to make the show feel like that of a memory.
The show began with psychology teacher Matthew Barker, playing the part of an older Curly, sifting through a box of objects, each item coinciding with a song in the overture. The famous song, “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” began after the opening of a music box. This signaled to audiences the beginning of Curly’s memories.
The eventual shutting of the music box at the conclusion of the show, the end of the memory, featured Barker coming face to face with his younger self, Tyler Bugg (12).
“I tried to really think about nostalgia, and the choices people make to get what they want in life. That led us to the framing of how we approached our version,” Gehrke said.
These changes were met with great reception from audiences, with a total of 900-1,000 tickets sold.
“My biggest hope was that people who were already really familiar with Oklahoma saw the characters in a different light,” Gehrke said. Liberty’s “Oklahoma!” grappled with the effects of memories and nostalgia, and the role they play in how we think of the past. The show was not one audiences will forget.
